


A Pudding A Day

by IohannaFacTotum



Category: Tiger & Bunny
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-03
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IohannaFacTotum/pseuds/IohannaFacTotum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Barnaby is, as always, guilty of stealing the pudding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Pudding A Day

**Author's Note:**

> This was another request from a friend. It's a bit old, and it gets a little cracktastic towards the end. I hope you enjoy it anyways!

Antonio certainly had not expected this.

He had considered it enough that, when he had contracted the flu, his sponsors had given him some time off and his close friends and rival heroes had come to see him and wish him well. Some had brought gifts. Mostly cough drops and hot soup and things of that nature, but his particular favorite had been Kotetsu’s – a six pack of beer and some off-handed comment about how sick people should drink lots of fluids.

But he hadn’t expected the producer of “Hero TV Live” – who had so _begrudgingly_ agreed to give him time off – to be here at his door, holding a small Tupperware container of homemade pudding.

Antonio was all but speechless, so he simply stepped aside and gestured for her to enter the apartment, hoping she could look past the empty cans, water bottles, and Kleenex littering the floor. She didn’t seem to notice, walking into the room with that ever-haughty attitude of hers that he had come to respect so much. She continued into the kitchen as if she owned the place, presumably to put the pudding in the fridge. He shuffled after her, blanket wrapped firmly around him and making him appear even larger than usual.

“Can I get ya somethin’ to drink?” he asked, voice weak and distorted by a stopped-up nose, as he stepped into the small kitchenette to find her bent over in front of the fridge, fussily rearranging the contents and grumbling about how Wild Tiger must have been there and she’d never seen so much alcohol in one place outside of a bar before.

“No, I won’t be staying long. I just came to drop this by,” she replied finally, voice as harsh as ever. Antonio found himself watching her studiously – tracing the outline of her body with his eyes, admiring how the inward arch of her back was evident regardless of her current position, observing how her fitting lavender shirt wrinkled just so, conforming to the shape of her waist until it disappeared into that ever-tight pencil skirt clinging to her hips… He shuffled quickly into the main room again, partially to hide the ridiculous blush on his face and also to have the tissues handy in case of a nosebleed.

He plopped back down on the couch, already exhausted simply from moving around so much, and pulled the blanket tighter around him. “Well, thanks, I appreciate it, Miss Agnes,” he said bashfully as she returned from the kitchen as well.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t count on it again. And don’t drink all that beer Tiger brought you either,” she commanded as if this were only another moment to be aired on television.

She didn’t even so much as say goodbye before she left him there with nothing but Kleenex, beer, and pudding. Antonio was only hurt by this for a few moments before he curled up on the couch and dozed off, only to wake late into the afternoon and devour the entire pudding before collapsing yet again into fever-induced sleep.

~~~

He was woken the next morning by loud, impatient banging on his apartment door.‘Who in the hell… What time is it?” Groggy and in a bit of a daze, he rolled over and stared at the clock for several minutes before realizing that it was already almost noon.

The banging on his door continued persistently, grinding at his nerves and eventually forcing his head to join in on the pounding. He managed to get to his feet and half-stumble to the door. “I’m comin’, I’m comin’! Hold your horses! Kotetsu, damn it all, if it’s you…” he growled, cracking the door and peeking out to see…

“M-Miss Agnes?!” He opened the door further and stepped aside, watching her curiously as she walked in just as she had before. And this time, she had a container of pudding in one hand and a grocery bag in the other.

“Yeah, I figured I’d bring you some stuff,” she grumbled, heading straight to the kitchen again. Antonio was wise enough this time not to follow. “I brought a few bottles of water, some tea bags, and one of those little boxes of Crystal Light or whatever. So now you don’t have any excuse – if I find out you’ve been drinking beer in your condition, you’re gonna get it when you get back to work.” As she finished her sentence, she stalked out of the kitchen again, heels clicking on the cheap linoleum until she reached the thin carpet. She continued until she stood in his doorway again. “I’ll be checking up on you. Hurry up and sweat that fever out.” She all but slammed the door behind her before he even had the time to nod.

~~~

Another couple of days went by like this, with Agnes abruptly showing up around noon with pudding and a few things for his health. Antonio could feel his fever slowly ebbing away and his strength returning little by little. He was convinced it was the pudding. Every day, he looked forward to her arrival and he’d begun to save a spot in his fridge for that life-giving dessert.

One day, she didn’t show up. Antonio waited, curled in his blanket but ready to spring for the door to let her in. He only had one thought to comfort him – he had not yet eaten the last pudding. Finally, around three in the afternoon, there was a gentle knock on the door. Unlike her, but he was there in an instant, unlocking and flinging open the door to come face to face with, not Agnes, but Barnaby. His face fell and his despair must have been evident, because the smile disappeared from Barnaby’s face as well.

“Something wrong? Agnes said she thought you were getting a little better,” he rookie hero inquired, tilting his head slightly and peering at Antonio with those piercing green eyes as if they were reading into his soul.

“Ah… no… I was just… Um, where is Miss Agnes?” he asked quietly, widening the door and allowing Barnaby to enter.

Barnaby took a quick look around the trashed apartment and sighed. Antonio could feel the younger man’s judgments as though they were radiating from his body. “She said she didn’t have any time to come see you today, so she sent me to check on you and perhaps keep you company for a little while. I brought you some tissues and cough drops… Looks as though you might have been running low…” he murmured, glancing around at the empty wrappers and used Kleenex.

No pudding.

“Yeah… sorry about the mess.”

“Yes. Well, Agnes also said that, due to the progress she’s seen in you over the past several days, she expects you to be at work bright and early in the morning.” Barnaby set the bag of cough drops and tissues on a nearby table and looked again at the mess.

“I dunno about that…” Antonio sighed and flopped back down on the couch. “I’ll probably just go back to sleep, kid, but if you were planning on staying a while, help yourself to the kitchen. I appreciate you stopping by,” he said gruffly, pulling the blanket over his head and intent on hiding his disappointment for the rest of the evening. He heard Barnaby mumble a “thank you” before he succumbed to sleep again.

~~~

Antonio awoke in the middle of the night, sweating buckets and in a panic. With speed that shouldn’t have been possible for someone so sick, he bolted off of the couch and into the kitchenette, flinging the door to the refrigerator open. The last pudding. It was gone.

He dug through the fridge and finally peeked over into the sink and let out a single, mournful sob as he spotted the empty container there.

One thought filled his head. A name – Barnaby. Barnaby Brooks Jr.

He would get that kid for this. Someday.


End file.
